Latest news with #Phaeton
News18
6 days ago
- Automotive
- News18
When Gold Was Rs 88 And Petrol 27 Paise: What Everyday Prices Looked Like In 1947
Pure ghee was just Rs 2.5 per kilo, milk sold for 12 paise a litre, and a week's household ration could be managed for just one rupee. But incomes were equally modest, and ownership of many goods was a matter of pride, not routine. (News18 Hindi) Even air travel, though still a luxury, was more affordable in relative terms; a Delhi–Mumbai ticket cost Rs 140. (News18 Hindi) Cycles were a major status symbol. A sturdy roadster from brands like Hercules or Raleigh cost Rs 90 to Rs 110. Scooters and cars were rare; in fact, only royals, industrialists, and the wealthy could afford one. (News18 Hindi) A Ford Buick 51 was priced at around Rs 13,000, while the Ford A model Phaeton in 1930 had sold for Rs 3,000. (News18 Hindi) At the market, the price list was equally astonishing. Sugar sold at 40 paise per kilo, potatoes at 25 paise, and in villages, even cheaper. (News18 Hindi) 2-3 kgs of wheat could be bought for a single rupee. A bar of soap was often just a few annas. (News18 Hindi) Postal services, too, were inexpensive - a postcard cost 6 paise, and an envelope could be mailed for 9 paise. (News18 Hindi) The exchange rate then was equally surprising. Till the mid-1920s, the Indian rupee was stronger than the US dollar. By 1947, one dollar equalled Rs 4.16; by 1965, it was Rs 4.75. (News18 Hindi)
Hindustan Times
07-08-2025
- Automotive
- Hindustan Times
Volkswagen to discontinue its flagship Touareg SUV after 24 years
Volkswagen Touareg, the flagship premium big SUV from the German car manufacturer, is looking at the end of its road. The auto OEM is reportedly planning to pull the plug on the SUV after 24 years of production. The carmaker is planning to shelve the Volkswagen Touareg SUV by the end of 2026. British automotive publication Autocar UK has reported that Volkswagen replaced the Touareg SUV with the Atlas in the US, one of the key global markets for the automobile brand, owing to the fact that the OEM has not sold the Touareg in the country since 2017. According to the publication, Volkswagen does not have a model planned as a direct successor for the Touareg, which hints that the company is focusing on building a portfolio of affordable models for cost-conscious consumers. Also check these Cars Find more Cars UPCOMING Volkswagen ID.7 77 kWh 77 kWh 621 Km 621 Km ₹ 70 Lakhs Alert Me When Launched UPCOMING Volkswagen Polo 2025 999 cc 999 cc Petrol Petrol ₹ 8 Lakhs Alert Me When Launched UPCOMING Volkswagen Tera 998 cc 998 cc Petrol Petrol ₹ 9 - 15 Lakhs Alert Me When Launched UPCOMING Volkswagen ID.4 77 kWh 77 kWh 418 km 418 km ₹ 50 - 60 Lakhs Alert Me When Launched Volkswagen Virtus 1498 cc 1498 cc Petrol Petrol ₹ 11.56 Lakhs Compare View Offers Volkswagen Golf GTI 1984 cc 1984 cc Petrol Petrol ₹ 53 Lakhs Compare View Offers Also Read : Upcoming cars in India The Volkswagen Touareg entered production back in 2002 for the 2003 model year. The SUV came as the result of a collaboration between Volkswagen and its subsidiaries, like Porsche and Audi, that also spawned the Cayenne and Q7, respectively. Volkswagen designed the Touareg SUV, along with the Phaeton, at the time. The SUV was dubbed a premium product that elevated the brand into the luxury car segment. The Phaeton didn't last long, but the Touareg stuck around until the mid-2010s in some of the key markets, albeit with dwindling sales. Despite its focus on affordable models, Volkswagen isn't abandoning buyers in Europe who want something big. The company introduced the Tayron last October, which is available in two- and three-row configurations and is related to the Tiguan. Meanwhile, Volkswagen Touareg's discontinuation is going to be the end of an era for the brand. The SUV remained a bold product that featured a range of powertrains, including a V10 diesel engine. Check out Upcoming Cars in India 2025, Best SUVs in India. First Published Date:
The Citizen
06-08-2025
- Automotive
- The Citizen
Report: Curtain coming down on Volkswagen Touareg in 2026
A successor for the Touareg is, reportedly, not on the drawing board. Volkswagen's mid-life facelift handed to the Touareg two years has seemingly also been the nameplate's last based on a newly uncovered from the United Kingdom. 'Premium' era over The second model along with the ill-fated Phaeton supposed to have driven Wolfsburg's premium market push, the Touareg will, reportedly, exit production at the Bratislava plant in Slovakia next year with no replacement being planned. ALSO READ: Updated VW Touareg excels as head of the T-something family A move that will end the nameplate's 24-year run, an even indirect successor motivated by an electric powertrain won't materialise either. Not just Touareg This, according to Britain's Autocar, who cite unnamed inside sources within Volkswagen alleging that apart from the Touareg, the all-electric ID.5 will also bow-out in 2027 after what will be six years. Coupe-styled ID.5 will be phased-out in 2027. Image: Volkswagen According to the publication, the coupe-styled ID.5 has failed to gain a sufficient foothold on the Old Continent, despite its powerunit and fastback aesthetic. While the move to end the Touareg will leave the Tiguan-derived, three-seat Tayron as Volkswagen's flagship SUV, the ID.5 will not have a replacement positioned between the ID.4 and the ID.7 as the ID.6 is limited to China. Going first Revealed in 2018, the current third generation Touareg utilises a 3.0 TSI V6 or a 3.0 TDI V6, the latter having been the sole option for South Africa ever since the second generation. Plug-in hybrid Touareg R has never been considered for South Africa. Image: Volkswagen Modelled on the former, the Touareg R uses a plug-in hybrid setup that produces a combined 340kW/700Nm, while allowing for an all-electric range of 45 km. Riding on the MLB platform that also underpins the Audi Q7 and Q8, the Bentley Bentayga, Lamborghini Urus and Porsche Cayenne, an expected slimdown in production is likely to commence soon, though this remains to be confirmed. Locally… Replaced by the Atlas in North America seven years ago, local market sales numbers amounted to 164 units last year, the best being 34 in November. Sales for 2025 are set for an improvement as the first seven months have yield an offset of 126 units. Famously powered by Volkswagen's 5.0 TDI V10 and 6.0-litre W12 during its first generation, the former replaced by a 4.2 and later 4.0 TDI V8 that lasted until 2020, the current Touareg range comprises two variants, Elegance and R-Line, priced at R1 491 300 and R1 799 200 respectively. NOW READ: Volkswagen Touareg an example of understated excellence
Times
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Yorkshire's stately Bridgerton home with a quirky turret stay
As I peer up at the dome of Castle Howard, the screen-famous stately home that occupies an 8,800-acre estate 15 miles northeast of York, I take in a scene from the ancient Greek myth of the fallof Phaeton, frescoed across its interior. This 70ft centrepiece is one of the many design statements that the British statesman Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle, brought to North Yorkshire in the early 18th century to create an 'Italian palace in Yorkshire'. To do so he enlisted the help of the radical architect and dramatist John Vanbrugh, alongside Nicholas Hawksmoor, the designer behind Blenheim Palace and the west towers of Westminster Abbey. Some 300 years on, this country house has starred in multiple film and TV series, including the period drama Brideshead Revisited, made in the Eighties, and the Netflix series Bridgerton. At the end of April, as part of its ambitious 21st Century Renaissance project, it opened its doors to its newly refurbished tapestry drawing room. And next year the house will be available for occasional private rent, allowing holidaymakers to step into the lives of its present custodians, Nicholas and Victoria Howard, while enjoying the setting in the Howardian Hills, one of England's 46 national landscapes, which are protected for their natural beauty. Prices are on request but you can imagine it's suitably expensive. For those of us without such deep pockets there's the new Hinds House, a former gamekeeper's cottage, which is where I'm settling in for a weekend with my husband and two children. It's the newest of Castle Howard's stays, which also include a caravan and campsite with holiday homes, plus six other cottages in nearby villages. Hinds House is by far its quirkiest, forming part of a turret in the estate's original mock medieval walls, built by the 18th-century architect John Carr, who also designed Derbyshire's Buxton Crescent and West Yorkshire's Harewood House. As we drive along the poker-straight avenue to Castle Howard, it brings back memories of day trips here as a child — I grew up some 30 miles north, in the North York Moors. Down a narrow country lane, a large field's distance south of Castle Howard itself, we find the house. It sits beside a walled garden of lavender, with a private lawn containing a weeping birch tree that the children sneak beneath. • The 100 Best Places to Stay in the UK for 2025 Inside, the cottage is filled with vintage pieces from the stately home. Walls are lined with replica wallpaper from the estate's archives and portraits of earls who have lived at Castle Howard. They keep a watchful eye over the children as they dance around dressers filled with antique china. The living room exudes vintage maximalism, with ornaments and pots dotting the surfaces, and a total of — yes, we counted — 17 lampshades. Elsewhere, modern striped fabrics, pompom-fringed curtains and Pooky-style lampshades, along with French grey painted cottage doors, balance out the time-warp chintz. I retreat to the copper bathtub in the most impressive of its two bathrooms — the one whose curved stone walls form part of the turret — for a soak. The kitchen, meanwhile, has a modern country feel, with a massive Smeg fridge, a rustic farmhouse table, framed pictures of cockerels and views of hopping rabbits. Its Aga keeps us toasty and cooks our Yorkshire bacon, from Castle Howard's farm shop, within minutes. You could easily spend a weekend relaxing in this quirky property but you'd miss out if you didn't delve into Castle Howard's 600 acres of parkland, whose Pyramid folly and colonnaded mausoleum — where some 30 members of the Howard family are interred — can be seen from the cottage. It's in the parkland that we find several head-turning features including an 80ft-tall obelisk and a stone fountain featuring a huge figure of the Titan Atlas. The caw of electric-blue peacocks echoes throughout. • Read our travel guide to England here We dodge muddy puddles through the pine-scented Ray Wood, where candyfloss-coloured petals unfurl from giant rhododendrons. Their gigantic leaves delight my six-year-old daughter, who plucks them from the forest floor. She and her five-year-old brother race down the wood's steep hill while I soak up its extraordinary view of Castle Howard's baroque architecture. They coax me over a bridge that wobbles across the waterfowl-filled waters of Skelf Island, the estate's adventure playground. In summer you can join the queues for boat trips over the Great Lake: a prime opportunity for birdwatching and enjoying views of the property's north-facing façade, whose entrance appeared in Bridgerton (adults £6; children £4). I walk around the house too, which is free for one day for guests staying at Hinds House. Some of its rooms were destroyed during a fire in 1940 but the dome, with its fresco, was rebuilt in 1962. In the Eighties, filming of Brideshead Revisited funded reconstruction of the garden hall and new library. • 25 of the best unusual places to stay in the UK The new tapestry drawing room features cyan walls with a striking gold entablature, its frieze inspired by Vanbrugh's decoration in the great hall and the Roman Ara Pacis (altar of peace), a monument now housed in its own museum in Rome. A specialist conservator has stabilised the tapestries, which depict the four seasons. Other rooms — including the long gallery and grand staircase — have had a complete refurb and rehang of paintings, with Grand Tour treasures from Roman busts to mosaics added and rearranged. Aside from its extraordinary country house, the Howardian Hills have become synonymous with high-quality local food and drink. North Yorkshire's food capital of Malton, which has the tagline 'a town of makers and markets', is a ten-minute drive from Castle Howard and is celebrated for its raft of artisan producers and independent shops. The town's Shambles takes you back in time, with tiny antique stores housed in former stables. Here I drop into the Woodlark and pick up a beautifully carved oak cheeseboard, its label telling me 'provenance: the Castle Howard estate' ( There's also a clutch of Michelin-starred restaurants, lauded for their use of the area's rich natural larder. During our stay we visit a newcomer, Restaurant Mýse, a renovated 19th-century pub in Hovingham helmed by the North Yorkshire lad Joshua Overington, for its 17-course tasting menu (from £145; The restaurant's ethos is 'micro seasonality' and it uses foraged ingredients, such as wild mushrooms, medlars and apples, from the Castle Howard estate. The doughnut-like braised ox cheek in Yorkshire pudding batter, and the chicken drippings — into which we dunk sourdough — are heavenly. The crab custard topped with various pickled, fermented, salted and braised mushrooms ignites taste buds I didn't know I possessed. The standout dessert is the Jerusalem artichoke ice cream, its birch sap also collected from Castle Howard. On our final day the kids have one last run around Castle Howard's serene gardens, whose towering box hedges make for excellent hide and seek. Behind us the dome's 23.5-carat gold leaf cupola lantern glistens in the sun and we catch a glimpse of Hinds House, which the children now affectionately call 'our little old-fashioned house', across the field. A grand historic house like Castle Howard is forever a work in progress. I look forward to seeing what Nicholas and Victoria Howard decide to do with the other rooms of Yorkshire's Italian McGuire was a guest of Hinds House, which has one night's self-catering for six from £250 ( and the Yorkshire Arboretum Castle Howard provides maps of the various hiking trails you can take, through pretty villages such as Ganthorpe, Coneysthorpe and Slingsby, as well as through ancient woodland filled with bluebells in April and May ( This 120-acre garden is two minutes from Castle Howard and is known for its red squirrel enclosure, where you can listen to talks with 'squirrel volunteers' as you watch the new colony of kits (babies) being fed. Trail tree maps lead you on walks across the rare tree-filled park known for its critically endangered Australian wollemi pines (£12; Tastings and demos with local chefs and MasterChef semi-finalists such as Olayemi Adelekan feature at this annual event. Arrive hungry, browse stalls of local produce and enjoy live music with a drink from a red double-decker bus (May 24-26; free; With commanding views over the Vale of York — and, if you squint, York Minster — this peaceful, elevated farm in Terrington, a ten-minute drive west of Castle Howard, has tea rooms, themed gardens and swathes of the perfumed purple flower (£5 in May; £7 June-August;
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Volkswagen Put An Experimental W10 Engine In BMW's Best M5
The legend of the Volkswagen Group's rebellious, daring, and absurdist creations pitched and produced under the rule of Ferdinand Porsche's grandson, the late Ferdinand Piëch, continue to enchant and mystify the automotive community. The team at DriveTribe uncovered and drove a perfect example of this daring absurdity in a YouTube video about an E39 BMW M5 that hid quite an oddity under its hood: A one-of-two experimental W10 engine that Piëch ordered to be created. No, my fat fingers didn't accidentally press the wrong key — this 10-cylinder engine was created by connecting two narrow-angle V5 engines in the same way VW did with the Passat's W8 and the Phaeton's W12. Now, why would Volkswagen go and put this experimental engine under the hood of a German competitor? Drivetribe presenter Mike Fernie explains that it was due to Piëch's desire to produce an M5 competitor, but since the Volkswagen Group didn't have a comparable model at the time, Piëch himself signed off on putting his experimental W10 right into an M5. Then, he reportedly used it as his daily driver because he was so impressed by the outcome. Must've been a mighty compelling thing, then. Read more: 2024 Acura TLX Type S Is A Different Kind Of AWD Sport Sedan Now, if you're familiar with the unique wail of a five-cylinder engine, then you are probably desperate to hear what two narrow-angle V5 engines connected at the crank sound like. Unfortunately it doesn't have quite the throaty growl that you may expect, though it does sound interesting. But as Fernie points out, that's kind of the order of the day when it comes to the VW Group's W-oriented engines. Neither the W12 used in an array of Volkswagen Group products, nor the quad-turbocharged W16 used in the Veyron and other Bugattis are particularly sonorous engines. Go on YouTube and type "straight piped W8 Passat" into the search bar, though, and you'll find a few videos showing the ripper of a sound that the W8 produces. Anyway, back to the W10. The owner of the W10 E39 M5 mule tested it out on a dynamometer and found out that it produces 480 horsepower and about 436 pound-feet of torque. Unfortunately I cannot offer any driving impressions from my own experience, but Fernie seems quite smitten with the manual-equipped, W10-powered E39 M5, and I can't blame him. He's experiencing a one-of-one driving experience, as the only other W10 known to exist is mounted to a post in the owner's garage. What a cool experience — I'm only slightly irate with jealousy. Apparently it's for sale, though, if you happen to have a spare $500,000-ish laying around. If you're like me and you don't have a cool half-mil to burn, then we can just watch this video on repeat. Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox... Read the original article on Jalopnik.
